Gay Politics, Visual Culture and Photography

Menu

The last gay Holocaust survivor.

Yesterday the last known gay jewish survivor of the Holocaust passed away in Germany, aged 84. That is a sad event and one that deserves some thought and remembering. With his death comes the realisation of many things, including that it may now be easier than ever for people to forget the fact that so many LGBTQ people were imprisoned and/or killed.

It is important that all victims of the Holocaust should be remembered, but all too often history and the public seem to either not know of the involvement of LGBTQ people or they conveniently choose to ignore it. I can’t tell you how many people I have met over the years who were completely unaware that LGBTQ people were sent to camps and killed. For those of you who didn’t know, that is where the symbol of the pink triangle comes from; LGBTQ people were forced to wear that as their identification.

It is obviously very troubling that today we still have people calling for the death of LGBTQ folks. Indeed I wrote only a few days ago about a high-ranking member of the Salvation Army doing just that. One wonders if these people are aware of history…..or if they just chose to think that this kind of treatment is just and deserving like the Nazi party did.

Inequality allows these things to happen. We must make sure that they never happen again. Which means we must achieve equality for all.